Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (32 page)

“I had it comin’,” said Ray.

They were leery in the office because the symbol of force, the flame of sudden death, was in Bill. He was boss and they listened respectfully because boss meant power. It was Bill now and Spat with him. It’d been Duffy and McMann yesterday. And tomorrow they’d be on their knees before somebody else.

“That’s all,” said Bill. “I don’t need none of you, but I figured I’d start with you four, give you guys the first break. In a week we work. Dough for workers, and something else for the lice. Now scram, there’s a party here tonight.”

They scattered among the flats, glad the meeting was over. Hell with tomorrow. The Chisel began drinking with Mike McQuade; Ray and Schneck formed another coalition. They herded together. Only Spat and Bill were powerful enough to venture their own ways, joking, acting as if they were a mob in themselves.

Bill pulled down the shade in one of the rear flats. The bare yard with its lonely tree calmed him. “You boys, keep it down. The neighbors might get sore.” A kid pushed a bottle at him and he drank. “The women’ll be here soon, so you guys keep it down.” They cheered, the swaying drunken hands walling him in. He walked out, the bunch staring after him as if he were the colors of a parade. He stepped along the corridor, his hand sliding on the banister. He made the round of his kingdoms, getting groggy himself. There’s McMann here tonight, but they call him Ray. McMann’s ghost is Ray. Ray is Ray. We’re McMann’s children, and this bastard Ray is a son. I know he’s a son, that’s all to it…. His drunken positiveness struck him as an instinctive wisdom. Ray and McMann, with the same stone courage. Schneck was a big tough
egg
and could be made to toe the line. Not Ray. The Chisel was a slimy little skunk whispering in everybody’s ears. McQuade? Spat? Hell with my buddies. I don’t need be feared. Ask Spat for a job for Joe? Joe the policy book…. He took another drink, mournfully walking out on a bunch jabbering at his heels like apparitions he had created and could never be rid of. Joe must marry Cathy. Yes u’no. Oh, my God, give me a rest. “Say, you kids,” he bellowed, “I told ya to keep the noise down.”

He was getting tangled with all the millions of rooms he’d been in, the millions of corridors connecting them, reasoning out his troubles. Tell you what, Bill, he said to himself, numbers are accuracy and how many troubles you got … Things to a brother’s life had been done, spoiled a brother he had, maybe Cathy’d make him decent if he married her…. Hanrahan, you fat bull … blond, strong like the mamma and marriage? … Hanrahan, McMann; oh, you wait a minute, Hanrahan’ll be number eight-one…. McMann’s dead and here with his pal, me is his pal, hello, McMann old boy. How the hell’re you? (He searched in the blue smoke which was the graveyard of a thousand rising ghosts. Schneck was telling a dirty story to a fellow, himself, he was laughing.) Hello, McMann, how are you? I don’t feel sorry I bopped you. Have you anything against me? You have not, you must be proud of me, that’s why you sent your little boy Ray to watch me….

“I wish the women’d come,” said Schneck. Hahaha. Laughs. A glass of rye tilting.

“What women?” said Bill. “Hell, they’ll be right up.” He moved with dignity, engrossed in his game of numbers. In the toilet he noticed some dope’d already decorated the fresh-painted buff wall with a dirty mural, sketching in a fat woman, the important parts shaded, and with witty slogans above and below. Number one, two, three … Hanrahan, lousy mick snooper. Wise to me, want to get me on the holdups on Ninth, come after me about McMann, why the hell aren’t you interested in me and the McMann murder, don’t you think I know a little about it? What’d you do, McMann? I wish I had your brain wrapped up in a hanky to advise me…. Joe and Cathy, I got to fix that and be careful of Hanrahan, and run the club and get jobs and kidnap Rockefeller’s daughter and get plenty dimes and then I quit…. He staggered out of the lavatory.

The kids had gathered outside the flats like boarders piling out at word of Fire, and down below coming up were five women, Madge leading a quartet. “Back, alla you,” growled Bill. “Keep the racket down, you damn mugs.” The five women smiled, ding-donging their hellos like bells. “Hello, Bill,” said Madge. “Hell,” he said. The kids whispered that was Bill’s dame, snickering, yeh, that dame there, and what he sees in her, the bunch of bones, but nice eyes and legs, and she ain’t skinny, she’s slender, guy, she’s slender, guy. They admired him more than ever with a dame like her nuts about him. “Thirty guys here about,” said Bill. “You four babes gotta make love to seven eight guys a head. God damn it, no racket. You get twenty bucks apiece from me. If the kids wants extras they’ll pay it.” He glanced at the four dames, plump, thirty, wide built, ideal for lineups. Madge’d done a good job, got the right kind. While they watched, he yanked out his wallet and paid out the money. “None of you guys swiping this or I’ll kill you. You, Ray, Schneck, Mike, Chisel, you four fellers take charge, count out your sides.” He laughed in the turmoil, the scent of women, the smoke, all the boozy beery atmosphere like a hell about him. “You four take care of the dames, see everyone gets a fair break.” He winked at Spat, and Spat smiled back. Bill thought: If I show him dough he’ll be my man. He went to the office with Madge, shouting for Spat to keep the racket down. He switched on the light and shut the door. In the rear there was a brown couch.

“Holy cow, ever seen anything like it, those four palooks like monitors, so serious?”

“I wonder how much cut Paddy’ll take?”

“Forget it.” He took her hands. “How easy to bop a man off, but they’re scared of me so far. Work. I’ve got to find work to keep ‘em quiet. If I get by, you’ll be in the dough.”

“You’re kinda wild, honey.”

“Naw, only drunk.”

She seemed older smoking her cigarette. “Them dames oughta be glad with them nice kids, no greasers and no tellin’ what else they make. What a riot! You been feedin’ ‘em booze in trucks, it sounds.”

He thought of Joe. He had built his house well. Joe would marry Cathy and work for Spat. Cathy would help save Joe. The kids loved each other. He snickered. Madge stared at him. Madge didn’t know what a master builder he was. He knew. In a hundred years they’d all be dead. The hell with it. So Joe wouldn’t be a respectable clerk, wouldn’t lead a sissy life. That was his doing. God, always the weak must follow the strong. He put thought of Joe away from him. Hell with it. He had work to get for the kids. He needed his brain to think of that and of Hanrahan. How would he end up? Who cared? He felt careless of everything. He had one regret. He said to her: “Only McMann isn’t here.”

“Forget him.”

“I’ll give a reward for his killer.” He thought: My brother Joe.

“Cut it, Bill, you got me leery, you’re so pale, you look bad.”

“Just a lil drunk. Me and Spat got to run that pack of tigers, and the bull’s wise.” His eyes shone, the whites glaring an abandoned power, his thoughts leaping out of the office into which he’d sneaked like an animal to a den. He was alone with his body and her body, but his thoughts were in the world. His thoughts were with Joe and Hanrahan and the jobs to be pulled and the five grand or five trillion to be made. Hell, but he was also alone with their two bodies, and when she walked to him, her lips swaying, he rubbed his eyes to be sure. She put her arms about his neck. His body seized her body, but only his body. His thoughts were out in the world, and it was only a game of bodies, his thoughts with the time not yet come, fixed on the hour-hands not yet passed across the face of his life. Oh, blessed God, I cannot forget my brother or Hanrahan or the things I must do. It was only a body for Madge to love and that’s why she loved him, hoping to get all of him, and hoping, therefore loving…. The grand sweeping world, oh, the world, his life not yet begun, the tomorrows for seedings and harvestings, and what seedings and harvestings he now knew.

He looked at the bandage on her arm, and even in this secret hide-away where his body rested, McMann had come to put the bandage there.

This edition published by
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Copyright © 1934 by Benjamin Appel, registration renewed 1961
All rights reserved.

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This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-5552-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5552-7